Generation: Centralisation and Conservatism (1948–53)

Responsibility within the BEA for the design, construction and operation of power stations lay principally with Sir John Hacking, the deputy chairman with engineering expertise, and with the senior of the officers, V. A. Pask, the chief engineer, who like Hacking came from the CEB. The urgent problems of accelerating the construction programmes inherited in 1948 were being tackled, as we have seen, under Verity and Smith (pp. 23–8, above). The headquarters engineering department found, however, that for new stations it had to take on many more staff, both to develop its limited expertise in generation design, and to fulfil its function of coordinating the work of the fourteen divisions to which generation operations and construction had been decentralised. Most of the supply industry’s generating expertise had previously been in the larger power companies and municipalities (which had been in the forefront of developing the more advanced power stations), but the first power company engineer they recruited as head of generation design fell ill shortly afterwards and died.